Chapter Sixty-Eight: Alone! Alone! Lives of Some Outsider Women

I spotted this book in the independent bookstore in Amherst, MA, while I was visiting town for a wedding, and I couldn't resist picking it up and taking a peek.  I was, of course, hooked as soon as I did.  This is a somewhat odd collection, as it brings together various book reviews by Rosemary Dinnage; rather than being a (non-fiction) book about loner females, this book is a book of book reviews of books about women.  (Got it?)  Anyway, the reviews (more like essays, really) are tied together because each of them is focusing on a book (usually a biography, but not always) about a woman who for whatever reason was somewhat of a loner, or at least an oddity.  Many of the women featured in these reviews are not women I'd ever heard of, but I still found the reviews to be interesting, and I would even consider reading some of the books Dinnage reviews in this collection, which is itself rather strange in its composition.  I found it a bit dry and depressing at times, but it held my interest enough to read it through to the end; I would recommend it to someone really interested in reading about books about unusual ladies.